English composer and violist (1886?1979)
Rebecca Helferich Clarke
(27 August 1886 ? 13 October 1979) was a British classical composer and
violist
. Internationally renowned as a viola virtuoso, she also became one of the first female professional orchestral players in London.
[1]
Rebecca Clarke had German and American parents, and spent substantial periods of her life in the United States, where she permanently settled after World War II. She was born in
Harrow
and studied at the
Royal Academy of Music
and
Royal College of Music
in London. Stranded in the United States at the outbreak of
World War II
, she married composer and pianist
James Friskin
in 1944. Clarke died at her home in New York at the age of 93.
Although Clarke's output was not large, her work was recognised for its compositional skill and artistic power. Some of her works have yet to be published; those that were published in her lifetime were largely forgotten after she stopped composing. Scholarship and interest in her compositions revived in 1976. The Rebecca Clarke Society was established in 2000 to promote the study and performance of her music.
Early life
[
edit
]
Clarke was born in
Harrow
, England, to Joseph Thacher Clarke, an American, and his German wife, Agnes Paulina Marie Amalie Helferich.
[2]
Her father was interested in music, and Clarke started on violin after sitting in on lessons that were being given to her brother,
Hans Thacher Clarke
, who was 15 months her junior.
[3]
Her father was abusive, often hitting her with a steel ruler over infractions such as biting her nails.
[4]
She began her studies at the
Royal Academy of Music
in 1903, but was withdrawn by her father in 1905 after her harmony teacher
Percy Hilder Miles
proposed to her. Miles later left his
Stradivarius
violin to Clarke in his will.
[5]
She made the first of many visits to the United States shortly after leaving the Royal Academy.
[3]
She then attended the
Royal College of Music
, becoming one of Sir
Charles Villiers Stanford
's few female composition students.
[4]
Her substantial
Theme and Variations
for piano dates from this period.
[6]
At Stanford's urging she shifted her focus from the violin to the viola, just as the latter was coming to be seen as a legitimate solo instrument.
[2]
She studied with
Lionel Tertis
, who was considered by some the greatest violist of the day.
[2]
In 1910 she composed a setting of Chinese poetry, called "Tears", in collaboration with a group of fellow students at RCM.
[3]
She also sang under the direction of
Ralph Vaughan Williams
in a student ensemble organised by Clarke and another student called Beryl Reeve (later Clarke's sister-in-law) to study and perform
Palestrina
's music.
[3]
Following her criticism of his extra-marital affairs, Clarke's father turned her out of the house and cut off her funds.
[7]
She had to leave the Royal College in 1910 and supported herself through her viola playing. Clarke (along with
Jessie Grimson
) became one of the first female professional orchestral musicians when she was selected by Sir
Henry Wood
to play in the Queen's Hall Orchestra in 1912.
[4]
[8]
She was highly sought after as a violist, playing with
Artur Schnabel
,
Pablo Casals
,
Jascha Heifetz
,
Jacques Thibaud
,
Guilhermina Suggia
,
Arthur Rubinstein
,
Pierre Monteux
, and
George Szell
, among others.
[9]
In 1916 she moved to the United States to continue her performing career. A short, lyrical piece for viola and piano titled
Morpheus
, composed under the
pseudonym
of "Anthony Trent", was premiered at her 1918 joint recital with cellist
May Mukle
in New York City. Reviewers praised the "Trent", largely ignoring the works credited to Clarke premiered in the same recital.
[7]
She continued to perform with
May Mukle
in Hawaii in 1918 and 1919, and on a tour of the British colonies in 1923.
[10]
Her compositional career peaked in a brief period, beginning with the
viola sonata
she entered in a 1919 competition sponsored by
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge
, Clarke's neighbour and a
patron
of the arts. In a field of 72 entrants, Clarke's sonata tied for first place with a composition by
Ernest Bloch
. Coolidge later declared Bloch the winner. Reporters speculated that "Rebecca Clarke" was only a pseudonym for Bloch himself, or at least that it could not have been Clarke who wrote these pieces,
[8]
as the idea that a woman could write such a beautiful work was socially inconceivable. The sonata was well received and had its first performance at the Berkshire music festival in 1919. In 1921 Clarke again made an impressive showing in Coolidge's composition competition with her
piano trio
, though again failed to take the prize. A 1923
rhapsody
for
cello
and
piano
followed, sponsored by Coolidge, making Clarke the only female recipient of Coolidge's patronage.
[8]
These three works represent the height of Clarke's compositional career.
[2]
Later life
[
edit
]
Clarke, in 1924, embarked upon a career as a solo and ensemble performer in London, after first completing a world tour in 1922?23.
[11]
In 1927 she helped form the English Ensemble, a piano quartet that included herself,
Marjorie Hayward
,
Kathleen Long
and
May Mukle
. She also performed on several recordings in the 1920s and 1930s, and participated in
BBC
music broadcasts. Her compositional output greatly decreased during this period.
[2]
However, she continued to perform, participating in the Paris Colonial Exhibition in 1931 as part of the English Ensemble.
[12]
Between 1927 and 1933 she was romantically involved with the British
baritone
John Goss
, who was eight years her junior and married at the time.
[4]
He had premiered several of her mature songs, two of which were dedicated to him, "June Twilight" and "The Seal Man". Her "Tiger, Tiger", finished at the time the relationship was ending, proved to be her last composition for solo voice until the early 1940s.
[13]
In 1936 Clarke sold the Stradivarius she had been bequeathed to a dealer in New York. At the outbreak of World War II, Clarke was in the US visiting her two brothers, and was unable to obtain a visa to return to Britain. She lived for a while with her brothers' families and then in 1942 took a position as a governess for a family in Connecticut.
[14]
She composed 10 works between 1939 and 1942, including her
Passacaglia on an Old English Tune
.
[3]
She had first met
James Friskin
, a composer, concert pianist, and founding member of the
Juilliard School
faculty, and later to become her husband, when they were both students at the Royal College of Music. They renewed their friendship after a chance meeting on a Manhattan street in 1944 and married in September of that year when both were in their late 50s. According to musicologist Liane Curtis, Friskin was "a man who gave [Clarke] a sense of deep satisfaction and equilibrium."
[4]
Clarke has been described by
Stephen Banfield
as the most distinguished British female composer of the inter-war generation.
[15]
However, her later output was sporadic.
[2]
It has been suggested by musicologist Liane Curtis that Clarke had
dysthymia
, a chronic form of
depression
;
[16]
the lack of encouragement?sometimes outright discouragement?she received for her work also made her reluctant to compose.
[4]
Clarke did not consider herself able to balance her personal life and the demands of composition: "I can't do it unless it's the first thing I think of every morning when I wake and the last thing I think of every night before I go to sleep." After her marriage, she stopped composing, despite the encouragement of her husband, although she continued working on arrangements until shortly before her death. She also stopped performing.
[2]
[4]
In 1963 Clarke helped establish the May Mukle prize at the Royal Academy. The prize is still awarded annually to an outstanding cellist.
[17]
After her husband's death in 1967, Clarke began writing a
memoir
, titled
I Had a Father Too (or the Mustard Spoon)
; it was completed in 1973 but never published. In it she describes her early life, marked by frequent beatings from her father and strained family relations which affected her perceptions of her proper place in life.
[4]
In the 1970s, as interest in her music, and in tonal compositions and in women composers, surged, she gave a few more major performances in New York.
[9]
Clarke died on 13 October 1979 at her home in
New York City
at the age of 93, and was
cremated
.
[2]
Clarke is now established as one of the most important 'women composers' of her generation. However, as she told a journalist, "I would sooner be regarded as a 16th-rate composer than be judged as if there were one kind of musical art for men and another for women."
[18]
Compositions
[
edit
]
A large portion of Clarke's music features the viola, as she was a professional performer for many years. Much of her output was written for herself and the all-female chamber ensembles she played in, including the Norah Clench Quartet, the English Ensemble, and the d'Aranyi Sisters. She also toured worldwide, particularly with cellist May Mukle. Her works were strongly influenced by several trends in
20th-century classical music
. Clarke also knew many leading composers of the day, including
Bloch
and
Ravel
, with whom her work has been compared.
[2]
The
impressionism
of
Debussy
is often mentioned in connection with Clarke's work, particularly its lush textures and modernistic
harmonies
. The
Viola Sonata
(published in the same year as the Bloch and the
Hindemith
Viola Sonata) is an example of this, with its
pentatonic
opening theme, thick harmonies, emotionally intense nature, and dense,
rhythmically
complex texture. The Sonata remains a part of standard repertoire for the viola.
Morpheus
, composed a year earlier, was her first expansive work, after over a decade of songs and miniatures. The
Rhapsody
that Coolidge sponsored is Clarke's most ambitious work: it is roughly 23 minutes long, with complex musical ideas and ambiguous tonalities contributing to the varying moods of the piece. In contrast, "Midsummer Moon", written the following year, is a light miniature, with a flutter-like solo violin line.
[7]
In addition to her chamber music for strings, Clarke wrote many songs. Nearly all of Clarke's early pieces are for solo voice and piano. Her 1933 "Tiger, Tiger", a setting of
Blake
's poem "
The Tyger
", is dark and brooding, almost
expressionist
. She worked on it for five years to the exclusion of other works during her tumultuous relationship with John Goss and revised it in 1972.
[8]
Most of her songs, however, are lighter in nature. Her earliest works were
parlour songs
, and she went on to build up a body of work drawn primarily from classic texts by
Yeats
,
Masefield
, and
A.E. Housman
.
[2]
During 1939 to 1942, the last prolific period near the end of her compositional career, her style became more clear and
contrapuntal
, with emphasis on
motivic
elements and tonal structures, the hallmarks of
neoclassicism
.
Dumka
(1941), a recently published work for violin, viola, and piano, reflects the
Eastern European
folk
styles of
Bartok
and
Martin?
.
[8]
The "
Passacaglia
on an Old English Tune", also from 1941 and premiered by Clarke herself, is based on a theme attributed to
Thomas Tallis
which appears throughout the work. The piece is modal in flavor, mainly in the
Dorian mode
but venturing into the seldom-heard
Phrygian mode
. The piece is dedicated to "BB", ostensibly Clarke's niece Magdalen; scholars speculate that the dedication is more likely referring to
Benjamin Britten
, who organised a concert commemorating the death of Clarke's friend and major influence
Frank Bridge
.
[19]
The
Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale
, also composed in 1941, is another neoclassically influenced piece, written for clarinet and viola (originally for her brother and sister-in-law).
[7]
Clarke composed no large scale works such as symphonies. Her total output of compositions comprises 52 songs, 11 choral works, 21 chamber pieces, the Piano Trio, and the Viola Sonata.
[8]
Her work was all but forgotten for a long period of time, but interest in it was revived in 1976 following a radio broadcast in celebration of her ninetieth birthday. Some of Clarke's compositions remain unpublished and in the personal possession of her heirs, along with most of her writings.
[16]
However, in the early 2000s more of her works were printed and recorded.
[20]
Examples of recent publications include two
string quartets
and
Morpheus
, published in 2002.
[7]
Modern reception of Clarke's work has been generally positive. A 1981 review of her Viola Sonata called it a "thoughtful, well constructed piece" from a relatively obscure composer;
[21]
a 1985 review noted its "emotional intensity and use of dark tone colours".
[22]
Andrew Achenbach, in his review of a
Helen Callus
recording of several Clarke works, referred to
Morpheus
as "striking" and "languorous".
[23]
Laurence Vittes noted that Clarke's "Lullaby" was "exceedingly sweet and tender".
[24]
A 1987 review concluded that "it seems astonishing that such splendidly written and deeply moving music should have lain in obscurity all these years".
[25]
The Viola Sonata was the subject of
BBC Radio 3
's Building a Library survey on 17 October 2015. The top recommendation, chosen by Helen Wallace, was by
Tabea Zimmermann
(viola) and
Kirill Gerstein
(piano). In 2017 BBC Radio 3 devoted five hours to her music as
Composer of the Week.
[26]
Rebecca Clarke Society
[
edit
]
The Rebecca Clarke Society was established in September 2000 to promote performance, scholarship, and awareness of the works of Rebecca Clarke. Founded by
musicologists
Liane Curtis and
Jessie Ann Owens
and based in the Women's Studies Research Center at
Brandeis University
, the Society has promoted recording and scholarship of Clarke's work, including several world premiere performances, recordings of unpublished material, and numerous journal publications.
[27]
The Society made available previously unpublished compositions from Clarke's estate. "Binnorie", a twelve-minute song based on
Celtic
folklore, was discovered in 1997, and not premiered until 2001. Over 25 previously unknown works have been published since the establishment of the Society. Several of Clarke's chamber works, including the expansive
Rhapsody
for cello and piano, and
Cortege
for solo piano (1930), dedicated to
William Busch
and premiered by him, were first recorded in 2000 on the Dutton label, using material from the Clarke estate. In 2002, the Society organised and sponsored the world premieres of the 1907 and 1909 violin sonatas.
[28]
The head of the Rebecca Clarke Society, Liane Curtis, is the editor of
A Rebecca Clarke Reader
, originally published by Indiana University Press in 2004. The book was withdrawn from circulation by the publisher following complaints from the current manager of Clarke's estate about the quotation of unpublished examples from Clarke's writings.
[29]
However, the
Reader
has since been reissued by the Rebecca Clarke Society itself.
[30]
Selected works
[
edit
]
Chamber music
- 2 Pieces: Lullaby and Grotesque
for viola (or violin) and cello (
c.
1916
)
- Morpheus
for viola and piano (1917?1918)
- Sonata
for viola and piano (1919)
- Piano Trio (1921)
- Rhapsody
for cello and piano (1923)
- Passacaglia on an Old English Tune
for viola (or cello) and piano (?1940?1941)
- Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale
for viola and clarinet (1941)
Vocal
- Shiv and the Grasshopper
for voice and piano (1904); words from
The Jungle Book
by
Rudyard Kipling
- Shy One
for voice and piano (1912); words by
William Butler Yeats
- He That Dwelleth in the Secret Place
(
Psalm 91
) for soloists and mixed chorus (1921)
- The Seal Man
for voice and piano (1922); words by
John Masefield
- The Aspidistra
for voice and piano (1929); words by
Claude Flight
- The Tiger
for voice and piano (1929?1933); words by
William Blake
- God Made a Tree
for voice and piano (1954); words by Katherine Kendall
Choral
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Broad, Leah (2023).
Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World
. Faber and Faber.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
Ponder, Michael (2004).
"Clarke, Rebecca Helferich (1886?1979)"
.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
. Oxford University Press.
(subscription required)
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Curtis, Liane (2005). "Violist to Violist: Nancy Uscher's Interview with Rebecca Clarke Friskin". In Curtis, Liane (ed.).
A Rebecca Clarke Reader
. Rebecca Clarke Society. p. 185.
ISBN
978-0-9770079-0-5
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
Curtis, Liane (May 1996).
"A Case of Identity"
(PDF)
.
Musical Times
.
137
(1839): 15?21.
doi
:
10.2307/1003935
.
JSTOR
1003935
.
- ^
"Antonio Stradivari, Cremona, 1720, the 'General Kyd' (Provenance)"
.
Tarisio Auctions
. Retrieved
4 September
2023
.
- ^
"Complete Piano Music"
.
MusicWeb
. Retrieved
23 September
2022
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Ponder, Michael (2000).
Rebecca Clarke: Midsummer Moon
(Media notes). Dutton Laboratories.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Curtis, Liane.
"Rebecca Clarke"
.
Grove Music
Online
.
(subscription required)
- ^
a
b
"Life"
.
Rebecca Clarke
. 3 June 2020.
- ^
"Her Life"
. Rebecca Clarke Society
. Retrieved
11 December
2023
.
- ^
Reich, Nancy B (2005). "Rebecca Clarke: An Uncommon Woman". In Curtis, Liane (ed.).
A Rebecca Clarke reader
. Rebecca Clarke Society. pp. 10?18.
ISBN
978-0-9770079-0-5
.
- ^
Clarke, Rebecca (Autumn 1931). "La Semaine Anglaise at the Paris Colonial Exhibition".
BMS Bulletin
. New Series I: 7?11.
- ^
Stein, Deborah (2005). "
'Dare seize the fire': An introduction to the songs of Rebecca Clarke". In Curtis, Liane (ed.).
A Rebecca Clarke Reader
. Rebecca Clarke Society. pp. 43?78.
ISBN
978-0-9770079-0-5
.
- ^
Ammer, Christine (2001).
Unsung: A History of Women in American Music
(2nd ed.). Amadeus. p. 167.
ISBN
1-57467-058-1
.
- ^
Banfield, Stephen (1995). "Clarke, Rebecca (Thacher)".
The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers
. W.W. Norton and Co. p. 120.
- ^
a
b
Curtis, Liane (Fall 2003). "When Virginia Woolf met Rebecca Clarke".
Newsletter of the Rebecca Clarke Society
.
- ^
Schleifer, Martha Furman (2000). Program notes to Clarke's
Sonata for Viola and Piano
. Hildegard Publishing Company.
- ^
Broad, Leah (May 2023).
"Clarke, Rebecca"
.
Classical Music
.
- ^
Curtis, Liane (1999). Program notes to "Passacaglia on an Old English Tune". Hildegard Publishing Company.
- ^
Curtis, Liane, ed. (2005).
A Rebecca Clarke reader
. The Rebecca Clarke Society. pp. 3?5.
- ^
"Review: Britten. Lacrymae, Op. 48, Clarke. Viola Sonata".
Gramophone
: 48. July 1981.
- ^
"Review: Clarke. Viola Sonata".
Gramophone
: 42. July 1985.
- ^
Achenbach, Andrew (February 2003). "Review: A Portrait of the Viola".
Gramophone
: 65.
- ^
Vittes, Laurence (November 2005). "Viola View".
Gramophone
: 49.
- ^
"Review: Clarke. Piano Trio".
Gramophone
: 75. March 1987.
- ^
"The Famous Viola Sonata, Rebecca Clarke (1886?1979), Composer of the Week"
.
BBC Radio 3
.
- ^
"About the Rebecca Clarke Society"
. Rebecca Clarke Society. Archived from
the original
on 23 September 2010
. Retrieved
1 December
2010
.
- ^
"News and Events"
. Rebecca Clarke Society. Archived from
the original
on 9 November 2010
. Retrieved
1 December
2010
.
- ^
Byrne, Richard (16 July 2004).
"Silent Treatment"
.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
. Retrieved
1 December
2010
.
- ^
"A Rebecca Clarke Reader"
. Rebecca Clarke Society
. Retrieved
19 June
2012
.
External links
[
edit
]
Media related to
Rebecca Helferich Clarke
at Wikimedia Commons
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